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4 Adjust /etc/hosts

# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
192.168.0.100 server1.example.com server1
::1 localhost6.localdomain6 localhost6

5 Configure Additional IP Addresses

(This section is totally optional. It just shows how to add additional IP addresses to your network interface eth0 if you need more than one IP address. If you're fine with one IP address, you can skip this section.)

Let's assume our network interface is eth0. Then there is a file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 which contains the settings for eth0. We can use this as a sample for our new virtual network interface eth0:0:

Now we want to use the IP address 192.168.0.101 on the virtual interface eth0:0. Therefore we open the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:0 and modify it as follows (we can leave out the HWADDR line as it is the same physical network card):

6 Disable The Firewall And SELinux

(You can skip this chapter if you have already disabled the firewall and SELinux at the end of the basic system installation (in the Setup Agent).)

I want to install ISPConfig at the end of this tutorial which comes with its own firewall. That's why I disable the default CentOS firewall now. Of course, you are free to leave it on and configure it to your needs (but then you shouldn't use any other firewall later on as it will most probably interfere with the CentOS firewall).

SELinux is a security extension of CentOS that should provide extended security. In my opinion you don't need it to configure a secure system, and it usually causes more problems than advantages (think of it after you have done a week of trouble-shooting because some service wasn't working as expected, and then you find out that everything was ok, only SELinux was causing the problem). Therefore I disable it, too (this is a must if you want to install ISPConfig later on).

Falko Timme is an experienced Linux administrator and founder of Timme Hosting, a leading nginx business hosting company in Germany. He is one of the most active authors on HowtoForge since 2005 and one of the core developers of ISPConfig since 2000. He has also contributed to the O'Reilly book "Linux System Administration".